• A simple "Hello World" example
• Extending the "Hello World" example
• Extending the "Hello World" example even further - adding specific finders
• Introducing custom actions on your entities
• Introducing associations between multiple entities

In my various posts, and DNRTV show on BDC, you have heard me whine and complain about that big honkin' XML goo you need to produce, which defines the BDC application.

I also presented on BDC at a recent code-camp. One of the attendees asked me, "How do you know all this?". Of course my answer was, "I'm genetically smart" (which is total horseshit BTW). Actually, my answer was, I was thumbing through the MOSS SDK, trying various things out, until something worked. No that wasn't a lot of fun, and I wished there was a tool to help me write all that XML.

Well, there IS sucha  tool. It's called BDCMetaMan.

BDC Meta Man is the first application that provides the ability to create Application Definitions for the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS) Business Data Catalog (BDC) without writing a line of code.  No programming experience is required to take full advantage of the BDC Meta Man.  As long as you know how to use a mouse and a keyboard, you can easily generate Application Definitions with BDC Meta Man!

BDC MetaMan has the following features:

- It is an easy to use windows application that makes authoring BDC applications a breeze.
- Visual design tools speed up your development efforts! It feels a lot like authoring strongly typed datasets, which is easy enough (a.ka. genetic smarts not required).
- It lets you easily browse hrough your data sources. This is incredibly helpful when dealing with an application with multiple datasources.
- Your BDC application is created of various portions. As I mentioned in my various posts, you have entities, methods, method instances, associations, actions, etc. BDCMetaMan will let you visually inspect your application definition and edit any part of it.
- No need to know how to write XML or SQL
- Integrated Shared Service Provider administration web site makes deploying Application Definitions a fluid experience. Though saving out to an XML file and deploying via a script is also possible.

Now, a full disclaimer is in order. This tool has been written by my good friends, Nick Swan and Todd Baginski. They are both MOSS MVPs, and are very anxious to incorporate your feedback into the tool. So go ahead, and check it out. BDCMetaMan.